Eric P. Bloom: The management dress code

Eric P. Bloom/Manager Mechanics

Friday

Jul 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMJul 30, 2010 at 8:46 AM

Dressing appropriately at work will not necessarily help you, but not following your company’s unwritten dress code norms can hurt your upward mobility. Certainly there are general business rules that define what is and is not acceptable to wear in the workplace. Every company is different, so be careful when adapting this advice to your specific work environment.

Dressing appropriately at work will not necessarily help you, but not following your company’s unwritten dress code norms can hurt your upward mobility. Certainly there are general business rules that define what is and is not acceptable to wear in the workplace. Every company is different, so be careful when adapting this advice to your specific work environment.

As an individual contributor, you are primarily judged on how well you perform a specific task. If you are a computer programmer, you’re judged on how well you program. If you are a telephone salesperson, you’re judged on how much you sell. As a manager, you are judged on your decision-making ability; this includes ALL types of judgment, including what you wear. After all, if you don’t have the common sense to wear something appropriate to work, how can you be trusted to make good business decisions? This question may seem superficial, but within many organizations it’s also very true.

Consider the following:

- If you are an individual contributor and would like to get promoted, observe how your manager and how his/her peers are dressed.

- If you are a new manger, observe how your peers are dressed.

- If you want to get promoted to the next management level, see how the level above you dresses.

As silly as this dress code stuff may sound (truth is, it originally sounded a little funny to me), it’s true. For example, let’s say that the first time you went to your boss’ staff meeting you wore jeans and everyone else was wearing a suit and tie, how would you feel? You would most likely feel out of place. This would only have to happen to you once, and you would begin to pay more attention to how you and others dress.

As a personal example, early in my career I worked for a large computer manufacturing company. There was no company-wide dress code. That said, different parts of the company had unspoken rules of what to wear. If you were in sales or marketing, you wore a suit. If you were in finance, you dressed business casual. If you were in engineering or software development, you wore jeans and a cool looking T-shirt. My job occasionally caused me to visit all three parts of the company. The only way all three organizations would take me seriously was if I kept three sets of clothes in my car and changed what I was wearing as I drove from location to location. This was a little extreme, but it worked well.

The primary advice and takeaway for today’s column is:

- As a manager, the dress code rules become a matter of showing good judgment

- What you wear to work may not necessarily help your career, but it can hurt it

- Appropriate work attire is different from company to company

- Different parts of your company may have different dress code customs

For additional information on today’s topic, I suggest the book “The Etiquette Advantage in Business,” by Peggy Post and Peter Post. For comments on this topic or suggested future topics, please email me at eric@ManagerMechanics.com.

Until next time, manage well, manage smart and continue to grow.

Eric P. Bloom is the president and founder of Manager Mechanics LLC, a training company specializing in new-manager training and information technology management training. Manager Mechanics LLC can be found on the Web at www.ManagerMechanics.com.